


All Things Lost

by pletu



Category: Never Let Me Go - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, canon character death, how i wish this had ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pletu/pseuds/pletu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ruth realises her mistakes, and savours what little time they have left together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things Lost

I went to visit Ruth after her second donation, almost ten years after we’d all seen each other. I saw her laying in bed, and could barely breathe. She was pale and drawn, her hair lank around her face. She was weak, her skin thin and her lips dry and chapped. Gone was all her life, her vivacity. Instead she was quiet, apologetic almost in her movements, pulled into herself. 

We spoke, always remaining safely within what we knew, our memories and the time we had spent in Hailsham. The good things, never the bad. There was, in everything we discussed, a feeling of regret. Sweet and a little sharp, Ruth spoke as though she had been thinking of these things for a long time, mulling them over in her head to fill the time spent waiting for her next donation. 

I saw, as we continued to speak, that it wasn’t just her vitality and energy that had fallen away, but it was something else too. The sharpness in her face, the harsh almost vindictive glint in her eye had faded, leaving something soft in its place. I guessed it was the time, the way her experiences had washed over her, smoothing away all of those petty grudges she had always held. 

She went quiet for a moment, her hands worrying at a corner of the thin bed sheets. She took a deep breath, rattling through her, before she spoke. 

‘I haven’t… I haven’t ever been quite completely honest with you, Kathy,’ she began, shy and tentative. ‘I’ve had years to think back on how I acted, there’s been nothing much here for me to think of otherwise.’ She smiled sweetly, sadly, and continued.

‘What I did to you and Tommy was disgusting. I kept you apart for so long, for no reason other than my own stupid fears and jealousies. It’s ridiculous, because I spent so much time – precious time – thinking that it had to be one or the other. That Tommy could be won, by either me or you. And I was so fixated, so bloody stuck on this idea, that I didn’t realise.’ 

I kept quiet, let her gather herself. She was crying now, her knuckles white where they gripped the sheets. 

‘I didn’t realise that I wanted you both. That I never truly felt complete, comfortable, without both of you with me. I thought I had to sacrifice you to be with him. How stupid is that?’

I had begun to cry too, I could barely look at her.

‘I love you, Kathy. And so does Tommy. I love you both, and now I’ve lost my chance, I’m going to complete Kathy, and there’s no more time.’ 

She reached out, feeble and desperate. I grasped her hands and leaned over, pulling her towards me, her ribs pressing into my skin. She pulled me down, and I lied next to her on the hard hospital bed, my leg hanging over the side. The moment collapsed inwards, and instantly there was nothing but our two bodies, time became stunted in the weird way it does sometimes, the universe aware of how little of it they had left. 

I stroked her face, damp with salt and water. She had never been a pretty crier; it was all or nothing for Ruth, always. Her chest heaved and her nose ran, until I had calmed her. We lay next to one another, in this loop of time, a tangent from the normal linear passing. At some point, we began to kiss. Tender and soft and full of everything we had never let ourselves feel. We touched through the sheets, grabbing one another. Again, there was that feeling of desperation, regret. There was so little time left. I had finally found her, and she would be gone so soon. 

\-----

Ruth suggested meeting with Tommy, and I agreed. I knew she needed us to be together, to be absolved of all she’d done before she could complete. We picked him up outside his recovery centre, and once again I found it impossible to breathe. He was the same, but so much smaller. Or maybe everything else had gotten bigger. 

It was tense to begin with; Tommy didn’t know what to do with us now that we were here. I could tell that he wanted so desperately for things to be as they were, to be something that he recognised in this world that scared him so much. 

We went to see the boat, all of us standing there and wondering why we had come. Sitting on the grass bank by the beach, Ruth confessed. She told Tommy what she had told me, how sorry she was for keeping us apart. She told us what she had wanted all along, that she loved us both. Tommy was quiet. It had always taken him longer to process things, something Ruth had always become frustrated with. She had always been impatient. 

\-----

We took Ruth back to the recovery centre, and helped her into her bed. Tommy stood by the doorway, hands in his pockets, always uncertain of what to do with himself. I tucked Ruth into the sheets, kissed her on the forehead, and would have left had she not reached out and grabbed my hand. 

‘Please don’t leave yet,’ she whispered, and her eyes were wet again. I couldn’t have left, even though I knew how dangerous it was to let myself experience something I could never have. So I took off my coat, my shoes, and lay beside her, taking her into my arms. She buried her head against my chest, her hands caught up in my blouse. 

I heard a shuffle by the door, and Tommy approached the bed. He copied me, removing his coat and shoes, and climbed in the other side of Ruth. He wrapped his hand around her waist, his body pressed against hers. His free hand found mine, and gripped it with all the emotion I knew he couldn’t express through words. 

I found myself unable to move, unable to disturb this arrangement. I thought to myself that if I shifted, even slightly, I would ruin it all. This moment would shatter, as fragile as it was. I imagined that as we laid here, our bodies pressed against one another’s, touching in as many places as we could, that our skin was hardening, our blood was cooling, and that months later we would be found just like this, our bodies turned to stone. 

We kissed again, Ruth and I, before she turned to kiss Tommy. Then, as he leaned over towards me, Ruth gripped both our hands to her chest, and when we pulled apart I could see that she was crying. It was as though some ceremony had been completed, and I knew that there was closure in this act, a sense of finality. It felt odd. It was something that should have been filled with possibilities, a fresh beginning. 

We fell asleep like that, entwined and connected, and I felt more complete than I had in over ten years. 

\-----

Ruth died two weeks later, and it was all the more bitter a loss after what we had gained. The deferral, our last hope, had fallen through. Tommy and I fell into one another, clung to each other as though we were lovers lying in bed as the walls fell down around us, torn away by a hurricane. We had nothing now; our memories tinged with grief and our futures an impossibility. 

Not long after, I was alone. I thought back to Ruth and Tommy in those last months as I donated, much as their thoughts had travelled backwards. I thought of what I had lost, and what I had gained in those last days before Ruth’s death. I thought of a time when there would be nothing for us to fear, when I would see Ruth and Tommy walking towards me, and we would exist in a world where nothing was lost, where no opportunity went unrealised. I grieved for my time lost with the only two people I had ever loved in this micro world.

But I suppose I was lucky to have had any time with them at all.


End file.
